Chicago selects Elon Musk’s Boring Company to build express line from O‘Hare

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

edit: ninja'd

The blue line is: slower, smellier, more crowded, more prone to "boop boop boop, we're experiencing delays and regret the inconvenience. We expect to be moving shortly."

He's done something to improve the tunneling process aside from making the tunnel less wide. The number of days of active digging versus idle time and the length he's made in LA dictate that some processes have been improved.

In Chicago, chewing a 14 foot wide tunnel through limestone should not be challenging as it's pretty soft rock. The real question will be how fast he can install sleaving around the tunnel as the rock is very porous and full of water. He has to go under rivers for parts of his tunnels in Chicago.

My guess is that there will *not* be just one set of stations at either end when it opens. I am sure once construction starts there will be pubic money spent on stations along the line. This allows the Boring company to have the required emergency egress points for no cost, and to increase traffic. I am fairly certain we will not see rails in the tunnel, but I don't think we'll see any traditional electric cars either, sled or no sled. Somewhere down the road I suspect we'll see autonomous car services that will simply drive up and through a gate and down into the tunnel. This way a 'taxi' would pick you up at home and drop you directly at your destination while bypassing street traffic for large portions of the trip (for a premium price!)

Modern tunnel borers, and Boring is using a post-modern tunnel borer, put up the sleeves as they progress. Check out one of those "amazing projects" videos, they're really neat machines. Depending on the route, they'll only need to go under the river at most twice, and I would expect they would aim for once since there's no good reason to go under both branches of the Chicago River in this case.

The LA tunnel has rails, so I expect we'll see that in Chicago as well. It simplifies things quite a lot, and probably gives you better speed and less wear than tires. I don't see them reaching 150mph on a standalone vehicle, they're at least going to need one rail for power, so why not the usual three?

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 for a "loop ticket" and you get there in less time is easily a deal. As a point of comparison Heathrow Express tickets are $37, round trip is $50. 17K people use it a day.

Now they may go with a cheaper ticket (maybe $19.95) but it doesn't have to be the cheapest possible option because it also is the fasted possible option.

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 and you get there in less time is easily a deal.

But the Blue Line is only $5 from O'Hare and $2.50 from the city and would only take an extra 30 min over the express train. Of course you'd also have to deal with all the crazies on the Blue Line...

Yeah they may have to adjust the prices. If $19 tickets net them more net revenue than $25 tickets it will be $19.

20,000/day * $50/person * 365 = $365M/yr. So the numbers add up (albeit in a rough, optimal, reality-won't-really-compare sort of way). But then again, 30 seconds is only an estimate. They could make the trams a bit bigger and do it every 25 seconds and it would impact the calculations considerably.

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 for a "loop ticket" and you get there in less time is easily a deal. As a point of comparison Heathrow Express tickets are $37, round trip is $50. 17K people use it a day.

Now they may go with a cheaper ticket (maybe $19.95) but it doesn't have to be the cheapest possible option because it also is the fasted possible option.

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 for a "loop ticket" and you get there in less time is easily a deal. As a point of comparison Heathrow Express tickets are $37, round trip is $50. 17K people use it a day.

Now they may go with a cheaper ticket (maybe $19.95) but it doesn't have to be the cheapest possible option because it also is the fasted possible option.

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

edit: ninja'd

The blue line is: slower, smellier, more crowded, more prone to "boop boop boop, we're experiencing delays and regret the inconvenience. We expect to be moving shortly."

This new line will definitely be less crowded if they charge 6 times more per ticket. They could even improve on that 'crowding' by charging, let's say $100 for the 'exclusivity'

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 and you get there in less time is easily a deal.

But the Blue Line is only $5 from O'Hare and $2.50 from the city and would only take an extra 30 min over the express train. Of course you'd also have to deal with all the crazies on the Blue Line...

Yeah they may have to adjust the prices. If $19 tickets net them more net revenue than $25 tickets it will be $19.

Yeah, like I said in an earlier comment they could probably learn from the pricing on Toronto Airport Express link. That takes about 15 minutes but also has 2 intermediate stops which is more convenient for people who aren't going all the way downtown. It was initially priced pretty high, the cost for 2 people to take it was about the same as taxi, even though it was much faster than cab ridership was quite low (cabs also take you directly to your destination and that additional travel time often isn't considered). It wasn't until they dropped the prices to around $15 that ridership went up.

One of the city's main stipulations was that the service cost less to use than comparable taxi and ride-share services,

Okay, I take a cab, and it takes me about 45 minutes. I take the Boring service, and it takes me 12 minutes. Why shouldn’t I pay a premium?

The cars can hold 16 people and leave every 30 seconds. That’s 32 people per minute or 1,920 people per hour. Heck, it’s a maximum of 46,000 people per day. I suspect that most people travel to and from the airport either at night to make a meeting or early in the morning if they’re staying at an airport hotel. Let’s say 80% of the rides are between 7am to 9am and 5pm to 11pm going to downtown. That means 16,000 people will be using it during that 8 hour period. However, the maximum the tunnel can serve is a bit over 15,000.

It doesn’t add up. The costs will be too high and they can’t pull in enough revenue or serve enough people.

When I fly into New York to EWR it would take a cab 40 minutes to an hour and cost over $50 to get to Manhattan from EWR. The train from the airport to Penn Station takes less time and costs like $16, this thing needs to price based on mass transit rates, not taxi rates.

Good point. Does the 25k people going downtown from O'Hare include train passengers? It looks like the train fare is only $5.

I live not far from the end of the Blue line. When you get to River Road, the stop before O'hare, there's usually at least 100 people on the train still. Some of them started well after the loop (when I fly, I like to get dropped off at an El station such as Harlem and ride the short distance to the airport to save time for whoever drops me off), but you still see plenty of people getting on downtown with their bags.

I don't see this line having any problem finding passengers at any price below an airport cab ($75 or so including tip). Frankly I'm not sure they're building big enough.

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 for a "loop ticket" and you get there in less time is easily a deal. As a point of comparison Heathrow Express tickets are $37, round trip is $50. 17K people use it a day.

Now they may go with a cheaper ticket (maybe $19.95) but it doesn't have to be the cheapest possible option because it also is the fasted possible option.

Between the hours roughly of 2am and 4am the taxi is blazing fast! Unless there’s a snowstorm.

I forget if it was 10am or 2pm, but I’ve aimed to avoid rush hour and ended up needing to ask forgiveness to get my luggage on the plane because it took well over an hour to get to the airport, rather than the 45 minutes I’d expected.

It's 17 miles and the CTA trains are governed to 70MPH max (I've only ever see the blue line get to this going to Forest Park). If the train skipped all stations between ORD and Washington/Dearborn I'd assume a 40MPH average so 25 minutes. At 50MPH it's 20 minutes. This is probably the reason for the 20 minute target.

I fear this plan overlooks the laziness of people, including first and foremost me. Unless the tube drops me of at exactly where I'm going, I will have to get out of the tube and still find a taxi to take me to my hotel 5+ blocks away. I fear I won't be saving much time or money once that is done and the added complexity makes it not worth it for me.

Now for people working at the airport every day, they may be excited about this. I would also be interested in hearing estimates of those 20,000 users, whether they are repeat visitors or first time visitors to the city. I think if I was a repeat visitor I would be more likely to use this tunnel.

Have you ever taken a taxi from O'hare to the Loop before during rush hour? I assume you never have because someone who has would welcome anything that helps avoid that experience.

Finding a taxi in the Loop is one of the easiest things you'll ever do.

As a bicyclist, I would say you find them whether you want to or not! Fucking maniacs, I think the constant gridlock, and pedestrians who consider it their sacred duty to make downtown driving a living hell (myself included) eats their brains.

So at around 6 dollars a ride lets say, 20k customers a day, that's a cool 43million plus a year in gross profit. I wonder what the actual expenses will be. I know that these programs are Elon's way of proofing Mars requirements, what else is he going to pull out of his sleeve?

O’hare is the fourth busiest airport in the world.

Yes, but because it is a hub. Most people don't leave the airport, they just transfer to a different flight.

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 for a "loop ticket" and you get there in less time is easily a deal. As a point of comparison Heathrow Express tickets are $37, round trip is $50. 17K people use it a day.

Now they may go with a cheaper ticket (maybe $19.95) but it doesn't have to be the cheapest possible option because it also is the fasted possible option.

PER PERSON. And that's not including taxes, an airport destination surcharge, and a tip. For two people, it's about $75. And also a pretty shitty way to go from downtown the airport. Unless it's predawn or after 8pm, it's going to be way slower than taking a train, and shuttle buses are a far better deal. Taking cabs out of downtown sucks, and going the other way, when the train is right freaking there, makes even less sense. I don't know why anyone does that.

So at around 6 dollars a ride lets say, 20k customers a day, that's a cool 43million plus a year in gross profit. I wonder what the actual expenses will be. I know that these programs are Elon's way of proofing Mars requirements, what else is he going to pull out of his sleeve?

as a comparison, the Taxi fare is ~$24 between the loop and O'Hare. That's probably a better starting point for pricing.

On taxi fare finder, estimate is $55. The loop could charge $50 and people would pay just to save the time. It would be A premium product.

Also, remember the vast majority of people going from O'Hare to the Loop are business travelers, who are less price sensitive. If you're $300/hr information security consultant, spending $50 to save half an hour is an absolute no-brainer. Plus, the costs are getting passed through to the client (in one form or another) or to your company, so you don't really need to pay it...just justify it, which is usually pretty easy.

One unique factor in operating a transit system from O'Hare is that this is a central east-west hub airport for American and United, and both airlines aggressively "bank" their flight schedules to optimize layover times. They schedule a number of flights to arrive from the west within a short period of time, and they schedule another bank of flights to depart toward destinations to the east about an hour later. They have similar banks for routes arriving from the east and departing to the west.

This means that the traffic pattern for both departing and arriving passengers has big peaks and valleys throughout the day. Demand to arrive at O'Hare will peak at different times of the day than demand to depart from O'Hare. This banking phenomenon is not as intense as the daily rush hour pattern on a commuter rail line, where everybody wants to go inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening. But it's a more complicated schedule to handle because there are 8-10 flight banks per day.

So at around 6 dollars a ride lets say, 20k customers a day, that's a cool 43million plus a year in gross profit. I wonder what the actual expenses will be. I know that these programs are Elon's way of proofing Mars requirements, what else is he going to pull out of his sleeve?

O’hare is the fourth busiest airport in the world.

Yes, but because it is a hub. Most people don't leave the airport, they just transfer to a different flight.

Not entirely; it's also the only "proper" international airport in this part of the Midwest. For example to get anywhere overseas I'd basically have to drive/take a train to Chicago, and I make this trip few times a year even though I live a few hours out.

I don't think that is counting any of the other riders that get on or off in-between those stops. The express will make the blue line a much more enjoyable experience for those local riders, in my opinion.

Ha.

No, the local riders will be rewarded with a local-service Blue Line which gradually sees a fall-off in funding and aggressively deferred maintenance once well-to-do (and politically well-connected) downtown riders stop having to care about (and even stop seeing) the quality of the intermediate service.

It's 17 miles and the CTA trains are governed to 70MPH max (I've only ever see the blue line get to this going to Forest Park). If the train skipped all stations between ORD and Washington/Dearborn I'd assume a 40MPH average so 25 minutes. At 50MPH it's 20 minutes. This is probably the reason for the 20 minute target.

I have no idea what 70mph in a CTA train feels like, but I bet it's more of an adrenaline rush than any extreme rollercoaster ride. Probably the most fun is right before it goes off the rails in a ball of fire

That used to be a joke everyone told, but a) they don't really call it that anymore, it's I390 now - the Elgin-O'hare signs all disappeared when it was reopened as a tollway, and b) the extensions going to those two places are rapidly underway. The first extension, which will get the road to the backside of O'hare, is maybe 6 months from being done, and the parts that are done are SWEET, saving a good 20 minutes over the old way to get to Bartlett from the city (i.e. Lake Street or North Avenue once you ran out of I355).

I don't think that is counting any of the other riders that get on or off in-between those stops. The express will make the blue line a much more enjoyable experience for those local riders, in my opinion.

Ha.

No, the local riders will be rewarded with a local-service Blue Line which gradually sees a fall-off in funding and aggressively deferred maintenance once well-to-do (and politically well-connected) downtown riders stop having to care about (and even stop seeing) the quality of the intermediate service.

The blue line runs through some very high priced inner ring neighborhoods. It will be fine.

That used to be a joke everyone told, but a) they don't really call it that anymore, it's I390 now - the Elgin-O'hare signs all disappeared when it was reopened as a tollway, and b) the extensions going to those two places are rapidly underway. The first extension, which will get the road to the backside of O'hare, is maybe 6 months from being done, and the parts that are done are SWEET, saving a good 20 minutes over the old way to get to Bartlett from the city (i.e. Lake Street or North Avenue once you ran out of I355).

So at around 6 dollars a ride lets say, 20k customers a day, that's a cool 43million plus a year in gross profit. I wonder what the actual expenses will be. I know that these programs are Elon's way of proofing Mars requirements, what else is he going to pull out of his sleeve?

as a comparison, the Taxi fare is ~$24 between the loop and O'Hare. That's probably a better starting point for pricing.

On taxi fare finder, estimate is $55. The loop could charge $50 and people would pay just to save the time. It would be A premium product.

Also, remember the vast majority of people going from O'Hare to the Loop are business travelers, who are less price sensitive. If you're $300/hr information security consultant, spending $50 to save half an hour is an absolute no-brainer. Plus, the costs are getting passed through to the client (in one form or another) or to your company, so you don't really need to pay it...just justify it, which is usually pretty easy.

Sure, you could even make the ticket $200 and it would make sense for businesspeople going to/from meetings downtown, but that would be the opposite of "mass transit" as far as ridership numbers go. It would compete with limo service, not with the blue line.

Why would ticket be per car? $25 per PERSON not car. When is the last time you bought a per car ticket on a train?

I am not sure if it will work but 20K per day * $25 ea = $500K per day or $180M per year in gross revenue. Honestly I think ticket will probably be more than $25.

A ticket of more than $25 means they almost surely aren't going to get 20K riders per day. They're going to need to balance ticket price with increasing ridership. Given the costs of tunneling I'm not sure how exactly they'll make this work out but I'm really looking forward to seeing them try.

If a cab fare is $25, but a blue line ticket is $4 (I think, haven't been on a train in years), Elon cannot charge $25 for a ticket, unless he wants to have tens of customers

Cab fare can be as much as $60 during heavy traffic. $25 for a "loop ticket" and you get there in less time is easily a deal. As a point of comparison Heathrow Express tickets are $37, round trip is $50. 17K people use it a day.

Now they may go with a cheaper ticket (maybe $19.95) but it doesn't have to be the cheapest possible option because it also is the fasted possible option.

PER PERSON. And that's not including taxes, an airport destination surcharge, and a tip. For two people, it's about $75. And also a pretty shitty way to go from downtown the airport. Unless it's predawn or after 8pm, it's going to be way slower than taking a train, and shuttle buses are a far better deal. Taking cabs out of downtown sucks, and going the other way, when the train is right freaking there, makes even less sense. I don't know why anyone does that.

Maybe not everyone wants to haul their bags walking from the train station to their home/hotel/bus station

It's 17 miles and the CTA trains are governed to 70MPH max (I've only ever see the blue line get to this going to Forest Park). If the train skipped all stations between ORD and Washington/Dearborn I'd assume a 40MPH average so 25 minutes. At 50MPH it's 20 minutes. This is probably the reason for the 20 minute target.

I have no idea what 70mph in a CTA train feels like, but I bet it's more of an adrenaline rush than any extreme rollercoaster ride.

I was playing with a GPS app while on the train the other day, because of exactly this - we were moving faster than I can remember in years (FINALLY a big piece of construction on the Kennedy parts of the blue line are mostly done), and between Jeff Park and Harlem, we maxed out at 57mph. And yes, it felt like a roller coaster, both because the traffic outside the window (going MAYBE 10mph at the time) was a blur, and even with the new rail, you're still prone to getting thrown across the aisle if you're standing. I don't think the train could make 70mph on even that mostly-straight section unless the driver wanted to catch air, before joining the expressway traffic in a long lithobraking slide.

You're saying that constructing a 3.6 m diameter traffic tunnel costs over $4.3 BILLION per kilometer? I know little about tunneling, but that sounds absurd. And if it's true, no wonder Musk though he could disrupt it.

Building in cities is extravagantly expensive, but I don't think it's that expensive - London's Elizabeth Line, which has massive political support and is in the country best-known for tunnelling, was about $20 billion for about a hundred kilometres of train tunnel. Comparable prices per kilometre for incremental additions to the Berlin and Paris subway.

But American big cities seem to have uniquely expensive infrastructure issues; the Boston Big Dig was order of twenty billion though not all tunnels, New York has contrived to spend $1.7bn per kilometre on a subway line.

In all fairness to the big dig, it really isn't that comparable to any other "tunnel" project. It was basically completely replacing the expressway system throughout the city and doing it all in essentially mud fill (with multiple underwater sections) underneath hundreds of years of tunnels, etc. It was also undertaken well before modern tunnel boring machines became a thing.

That used to be a joke everyone told, but a) they don't really call it that anymore, it's I390 now - the Elgin-O'hare signs all disappeared when it was reopened as a tollway, and b) the extensions going to those two places are rapidly underway. The first extension, which will get the road to the backside of O'hare, is maybe 6 months from being done, and the parts that are done are SWEET, saving a good 20 minutes over the old way to get to Bartlett from the city (i.e. Lake Street or North Avenue once you ran out of I355).

Wait, so I can't tell this joke anymore? 😐

Technically speaking, its still true, but the O'Hare part will cease being true by next summer at the latest, going by the state of the unfinished section you can see from the frontage roads. It looks to me like the grading and most if not all of the bridges are already done, they've just got to drop rebar and start running the machines I call the ROADSHITTER 9000 which can lay down a mile of concrete a day.

20,000/day * $50/person * 365 = $365M/yr. So the numbers add up (albeit in a rough, optimal, reality-won't-really-compare sort of way). But then again, 30 seconds is only an estimate. They could make the trams a bit bigger and do it every 25 seconds and it would impact the calculations considerably.

It's not really clear to me why these are 16 passenger vehicles rather than, like, normal trains that can hold a ton of people. With the Hyperloop, it's a technological limitation. What's the deal here?

Maybe not everyone wants to haul their bags walking from the train station to their home/hotel/bus station

Only cause they're dumb. the Blue line runs straight across downtown - there's a station within a two-minute cab ride of every hotel down there (even in ALWAYS terribly slow loop driving), and at least a couple you don't even need to go aboveground to get to.

20,000/day * $50/person * 365 = $365M/yr. So the numbers add up (albeit in a rough, optimal, reality-won't-really-compare sort of way). But then again, 30 seconds is only an estimate. They could make the trams a bit bigger and do it every 25 seconds and it would impact the calculations considerably.

It's not really clear to me why these are 16 passenger vehicles rather than, like, normal trains that can hold a ton of people. With the Hyperloop, it's a technological limitation. What's the deal here?

Flexibility - it means you only need to run as many trams as you have people, storing trams is easier, and if they ever decide to create more stops, you could run directly to any of them without holding up the line, if you design the stops as sidings.

Yes, taking 40 minutes to travel 20 miles from city centre to airport is actually pretty reasonable by most large city standards.

I'm not sure if passenger numbers are enough to justify the tube cost. London tube for example carries 35,000 people per line *per hour*, and here we are talking about building a dedicated tube for currently 20,00 people per day, projected to rise to 35,000 people per day. This is at a time when travel times are becoming less important thanks to wireless tech, autonomous cars and cloud tech making remote working wherever you are more feasible / reducing downtime while in transport.

1/10 of the tube cost, spent on upgrading the Blue Line e.g. adding a non-stop airport only service, would get far faster results at less cost.

You don't live in Chicago, do you? It might be faster in some hypothetical reality where work on the L isn't done by hilariously corrupt contractors with shady ties to local politicians, but that isn't a hypothetical reality that Chicago exists in. If they could upgrade the blue line in less than a decade and at less than 10x the projected cost, it would be a miracle of such size and indeniable divinity that I would take up religion.

Letting Elon give it a go is a great idea. Maybe he can get it done in a reasonable time at reasonable cost. If he fails, it sounds like the cost is on him. That sounds vastly better than the usual alternative where the city just hands out taxpayer money to the corrupt. It might even serve as a template for sinking a city's transportation infrastructure. The idea of being able to drop under the city from nearly anywhere, and then to get to nearly anywhere else in a few minutes at a reasonable cost, would be game changing for the city. It might not replace subways for the very high density corridors, but it could replace a lot of vehicle traffic. Also, it would just be nice to be able to get to the airport at a reasonable speed.

So at around 6 dollars a ride lets say, 20k customers a day, that's a cool 43million plus a year in gross profit. I wonder what the actual expenses will be. I know that these programs are Elon's way of proofing Mars requirements, what else is he going to pull out of his sleeve?

No way tickets are $6 each. $40M in annual revenue on how much for the tunnel. $1B? That would be a 4% return (assuming zero operating cost). $10B that is a 0.4% return.

I would say $40 to $60 a ticket is probably closer to what it would take and even there a solid return is going to require increasing ridership.

Assuming 20K riders per day, $20 each trip ($40 round trip), 9% WACC, annual operating expenses at 15% of revenue ($43MM per year). The project would generate ~$2.7B in PV cash flow. If it cost $1B to build, that would be $1.7B NPV with a payback period of 6 years.

$8 / trip would be $0 NPV.

And that fare seems reasonable to me. The Heathrow express to get into London is 35 pounds round trip.

it's approx 18 miles at a conservative estimate of 100mph, which would take just shy of 11 minutes.

Wha?

It's a hair under 15 miles (per Google maps, which is quite accurate for the blue line as it perfectly follows the highway for nearly the entire trip); but the blue line's maximum speed (as with all CTA trains) is 55mph. So without stops, but not exceeding safety limits, it would be 16-17 minutes.

CTA trains are capable of, in theory, going 70 mph, but I wouldn't trust them to go nearly that fast; and given track conditions there are many places they're not permitted over about 30 mph.

So at around 6 dollars a ride lets say, 20k customers a day, that's a cool 43million plus a year in gross profit. I wonder what the actual expenses will be. I know that these programs are Elon's way of proofing Mars requirements, what else is he going to pull out of his sleeve?

No way tickets are $6 each. $40M in annual revenue on how much for the tunnel. $1B? That would be a 4% return (assuming zero operating cost). $10B that is a 0.4% return.

I would say $40 to $60 a ticket is probably closer to what it would take and even there a solid return is going to require increasing ridership.

Assuming 20K riders per day, $20 each trip ($40 round trip), 9% WACC, annual operating expenses at 15% of revenue ($43MM per year). The project would generate ~$2.7B in PV cash flow. If it cost $1B to build, that would be $1.7B NPV with a payback period of 6 years.

$8 / trip would be $0 NPV.

And that fare seems reasonable to me. The Heathrow express to get into London is 35 pounds round trip.

My understanding was that there were 20K total riders going to the Loop so only some fraction of them will end up taking this express line. At $20/person/trip I assume some significant portion will continue taking the blue line. I would also be surprised if the cost to build is only $1B.

London is much bigger city and is also a much bigger business hub than Chicago. I think the Heathrow Express can get away with a higher fare as a result.

20,000/day * $50/person * 365 = $365M/yr. So the numbers add up (albeit in a rough, optimal, reality-won't-really-compare sort of way). But then again, 30 seconds is only an estimate. They could make the trams a bit bigger and do it every 25 seconds and it would impact the calculations considerably.

It's not really clear to me why these are 16 passenger vehicles rather than, like, normal trains that can hold a ton of people. With the Hyperloop, it's a technological limitation. What's the deal here?

Flexibility - it means you only need to run as many trams as you have people, storing trams is easier, and if they ever decide to create more stops, you could run directly to any of them without holding up the line, if you design the stops as sidings.

That doesn't seem worth it. If a 1,000 people need to get to the airport at roughly the same time, we're talking about a half hour wait to get everyone through, assuming the cars can actually get off every 30 seconds which seems wildly optimistic. Meanwhile, 1,000 people can fit on a single train.

How can a pressurized tunnel be made at less cost than a legacy un-pressurized one?

The partial vacuum doesn't apply for the Loop, as others have said. Cost wise though, a Hyperloop tunnel should cost the same as a Loop tunnel to build. The lining used to prevent water ingress can hold the 1/6 atmospheric pressure the Hyperloop needs. Air sucking machines and airlocks would be the added extras.

Loop and Hyperloop tunnels are also a lot smaller diameter than typical tunnels, which is the main way Boring Co. is trying to reduce costs.